In his recent essay “Becoming a Work of Art,” the philosopher and critic Boris Groys presents a reading of narcissism through the social networks used at the beginning of the 21st century and postulates that the place of the selfie is not different from the image of Narcissus in the lake, which he calls “an early form of selfie.” This reflection on contemporary image, identity and beauty is a way of entering the universe proposed by the artist Juan Manuel Barrios in his exhibition: Utopia is the disco. This key allows us to open the door to the multiple layers that the artist draws on in his creative process: music, disco culture, fashion, cinema, Pop iconography, approached from photography as an essential support.
The Narcissus revealed in Barrios' darkroom directly looks at the self-portrait, the lake turned into an image in the era of the image. As Groys says, contemporary identity politics is that of respect for origin and genealogy. In this work the artist cuts himself out in the character of the sailor, a founding gay icon of pop (from Tom of Finland to the present), recognizing in this image the beginning of a creative sequence, in this way the photograph reveals an identity to us. This genealogy continues in The Little Flowers Become Carnivorous Plants, alluding to the New York Times headline about the Stonewall riots that was the first organized demonstration in the United States for the rights of the LGTBQ+ community.
The black and white photograph of the daffodils, a plant that grows where the eponymous character dies according to Ovid in Book Three of his Metamorphoses, refers us to vulnerability and also to beauty, as a political testimony of this identity. In these works, the body reveals its potentiality through the engineering of the self, which it elaborates through dissidence, generating a commotion in the forms of bodies. These disruptive events gave the possibility of exploring bodies, taking them to the political limit of rebellion, diluting repressive borders, since the enjoyment and survival of these bodies became a sine qua non condition. Traversed by consumer society and by technologies, revealing the power of being present, of Dasein, they are enabled to enter the scene.
Regarding the Beat video triptych, the artist states that: “it directly dialogues with the beginning of the night. From my vantage point, located in the city lighthouse, I observe and feel the atmosphere of the beginning of the night.” If beat means heartbeat, beat, or beat, it was also a literary movement of the fifties and in music it means rhythm, a fundamental element for a DJ both to capture the rhythm and to manipulate the speed to create a new one.
In a dreamlike and allegorical way, the ability of the lookout to contemplate and capture the nocturnal rhythm is the introduction of the identity of Narcissus in the night of the Disco. This work continues with the diptych of photographs The track as a destination, where the “pre-party” to the disco is shown.
The moment of preparation again alludes to the creation of an image where the logo of the Boy London brand stands out, which was a reference related to musical icons such as Sid Vicious, Boy George or Madonna. The artist invites us to imagine a dance floor like the one Peter Shapiro describes in his book: “The Secret History of Disco, Sexuality and Racial Integration on the Dance Floor”: “a dance floor traversed by a prodigiously charged atmosphere.”
This journey takes us to the nerve center of utopia, made up of two works: Detroit Techno House and Utopia is Disco. The first presents a DJ performance that can be downloaded as a file and is an example of the Beat that Barrios captures in his activity as a DJ.
It also alludes to the center of the Gay Disco music scene, another epicenter of dissent and object of pleasure that is transformed into art. This image is completed with the installation of the neon signs of Utopia is Disco, which appeals to places beyond practical reason and takes us to the place of Utopia.
The artist takes Thomas More's approach to the existence of a utopian society and proposes that we go to this concept, to understand that utopia needs to go with art and beyond art (Juliane Reventisch dixit).
Fashion and Time
Just as José Esteban Muñoz in his Queer Utopia points out the importance of: “the anticipatory illumination of certain objects is an open, indeterminate potentiality, like the affective contours of hope itself”, Juan Manuel Barrios presents us with these objects in the works The Extension of the Black Suit (Ode to Mcqueen) and Life and Time with You.
The first is made up of three pieces of tailoring created by the artist that are presented in a fashion show-performance by three models. In this work the artist reflects on his being a tailor and pays homage to his teachers: Alexander Mcqueen, Karl Lagarfeld, John Galliano, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Lutz Huelle.
The second presents a series of photographs of banana pairs that allude to a love story, to existing with the other in time, in this choreography of encounters and disagreements, difference and repetition (in the sense of Deleuze) give an account of the experimentation of others in me as multiplicity, another with whom to be, another with whom to dance. Utopia Arriving at the pond, turning your gaze, following the thread of a water lily that expands towards a blooming daffodil, finding the unique, perpetual time, the voracious image that summons us like a litany of prayer that announces the entrance to the dance floor.
The DJ explores the tone and the note rises, the flower is evidence, a sailor moves in trembling tides, equally firm he takes up his beacon position, he is the sentinel of the Palacio Salvo.
His silhouette explores a unique balcony, surrounded by ghosts, he is a presence, he is the one who holds the key to the collection for a journey that precedes us and takes us to the future.
Juan Manuel Barrios leads us to a work that evokes the miraculous ray of being, the nature of the image, the meticulous record of a flâneur who inhabits Montevideo and Buenos Aires at the same time. If the path the artist takes us on is careful in its chromaticism, it is no less true that there is a river that overflows, a pit between the rocks that becomes a voyeur, to exhale the dome that touches the sky as the sexes touch when they provoke pleasure.
There is a disruptive, exquisite world, a presence that announces the assembly of new desiring machines. We have to be attentive, in order to be able to enter an arm of the star. The waves hit the wall, there is cinema, photography and performance.
Bodies are modeled in space, let us discover the complicities, evoke small genealogies and bring the pleasure of conflict to the track.
Jacqueline Lacasa Curator
UTOPIA IS THE DISCO
In his recent essay “Becoming a Work of Art,” the philosopher and critic Boris Groys presents a reading of narcissism through the social networks used at the beginning of the 21st century and postulates that the place of the selfie is not different from the image of Narcissus in the lake, which he calls “an early form of selfie.” This reflection on contemporary image, identity and beauty is a way of entering the universe proposed by the artist Juan Manuel Barrios in his exhibition: Utopia is the disco. This key allows us to open the door to the multiple layers that the artist draws on in his creative process: music, disco culture, fashion, cinema, Pop iconography, approached from photography as an essential support.
The Narcissus revealed in Barrios' darkroom directly looks at the self-portrait, the lake turned into an image in the era of the image. As Groys says, contemporary identity politics is that of respect for origin and genealogy. In this work the artist cuts himself out in the character of the sailor, a founding gay icon of pop (from Tom of Finland to the present), recognizing in this image the beginning of a creative sequence, in this way the photograph reveals an identity to us. This genealogy continues in The Little Flowers Become Carnivorous Plants, alluding to the New York Times headline about the Stonewall riots that was the first organized demonstration in the United States for the rights of the LGTBQ+ community.
The black and white photograph of the daffodils, a plant that grows where the eponymous character dies according to Ovid in Book Three of his Metamorphoses, refers us to vulnerability and also to beauty, as a political testimony of this identity. In these works, the body reveals its potentiality through the engineering of the self, which it elaborates through dissidence, generating a commotion in the forms of bodies. These disruptive events gave the possibility of exploring bodies, taking them to the political limit of rebellion, diluting repressive borders, since the enjoyment and survival of these bodies became a sine qua non condition. Traversed by consumer society and by technologies, revealing the power of being present, of Dasein, they are enabled to enter the scene.
Regarding the Beat video triptych, the artist states that: “it directly dialogues with the beginning of the night. From my vantage point, located in the city lighthouse, I observe and feel the atmosphere of the beginning of the night.” If beat means heartbeat, beat, or beat, it was also a literary movement of the fifties and in music it means rhythm, a fundamental element for a DJ both to capture the rhythm and to manipulate the speed to create a new one.
In a dreamlike and allegorical way, the ability of the lookout to contemplate and capture the nocturnal rhythm is the introduction of the identity of Narcissus in the night of the Disco. This work continues with the diptych of photographs The track as a destination, where the “pre-party” to the disco is shown.
The moment of preparation again alludes to the creation of an image where the logo of the Boy London brand stands out, which was a reference related to musical icons such as Sid Vicious, Boy George or Madonna. The artist invites us to imagine a dance floor like the one Peter Shapiro describes in his book: “The Secret History of Disco, Sexuality and Racial Integration on the Dance Floor”: “a dance floor traversed by a prodigiously charged atmosphere.”
This journey takes us to the nerve center of utopia, made up of two works: Detroit Techno House and Utopia is Disco. The first presents a DJ performance that can be downloaded as a file and is an example of the Beat that Barrios captures in his activity as a DJ.
It also alludes to the center of the Gay Disco music scene, another epicenter of dissent and object of pleasure that is transformed into art. This image is completed with the installation of the neon signs of Utopia is Disco, which appeals to places beyond practical reason and takes us to the place of Utopia.
The artist takes Thomas More's approach to the existence of a utopian society and proposes that we go to this concept, to understand that utopia needs to go with art and beyond art (Juliane Reventisch dixit).
Fashion and Time
Just as José Esteban Muñoz in his Queer Utopia points out the importance of: “the anticipatory illumination of certain objects is an open, indeterminate potentiality, like the affective contours of hope itself”, Juan Manuel Barrios presents us with these objects in the works The Extension of the Black Suit (Ode to Mcqueen) and Life and Time with You.
The first is made up of three pieces of tailoring created by the artist that are presented in a fashion show-performance by three models. In this work the artist reflects on his being a tailor and pays homage to his teachers: Alexander Mcqueen, Karl Lagarfeld, John Galliano, Jean-Paul Gaultier and Lutz Huelle.
The second presents a series of photographs of banana pairs that allude to a love story, to existing with the other in time, in this choreography of encounters and disagreements, difference and repetition (in the sense of Deleuze) give an account of the experimentation of others in me as multiplicity, another with whom to be, another with whom to dance. Utopia Arriving at the pond, turning your gaze, following the thread of a water lily that expands towards a blooming daffodil, finding the unique, perpetual time, the voracious image that summons us like a litany of prayer that announces the entrance to the dance floor.
The DJ explores the tone and the note rises, the flower is evidence, a sailor moves in trembling tides, equally firm he takes up his beacon position, he is the sentinel of the Palacio Salvo.
His silhouette explores a unique balcony, surrounded by ghosts, he is a presence, he is the one who holds the key to the collection for a journey that precedes us and takes us to the future.
Juan Manuel Barrios leads us to a work that evokes the miraculous ray of being, the nature of the image, the meticulous record of a flâneur who inhabits Montevideo and Buenos Aires at the same time. If the path the artist takes us on is careful in its chromaticism, it is no less true that there is a river that overflows, a pit between the rocks that becomes a voyeur, to exhale the dome that touches the sky as the sexes touch when they provoke pleasure.
There is a disruptive, exquisite world, a presence that announces the assembly of new desiring machines. We have to be attentive, in order to be able to enter an arm of the star. The waves hit the wall, there is cinema, photography and performance.
Bodies are modeled in space, let us discover the complicities, evoke small genealogies and bring the pleasure of conflict to the track.
Jacqueline Lacasa Curator
